


Empyrean

by FuryGagarin



Category: Warframe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 00:30:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5687596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuryGagarin/pseuds/FuryGagarin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nef Anyo attempts to piece together fragmented memories after he is reunited with an ill-tempered living relic of the Orokin Empire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Indemnity

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fanfiction in a long time, please bear with me while I try to get back into the swing of things. Expect clutter and a metric ton of edits along the way.

The Liset's airbrake screeched as it descended into the docking station, bringing with it a strong boom of air which the Crewmen on deck instinctively braced themselves for. It tipped, slowly, hugging the edge of the stained metal floor to allow its sole passenger to disembark. The preacher stood silently amongst the throng of armed men, polished opulas glinting under the halogen lighting. Waiting.

They had raised their Dera repeaters and lined the deck in droves, fully expecting a weaponized Orokin construct to tear away from the craft swinging. Instead, they were greeted by the jarring sight of an old woman clad in a charcoal jumpsuit and a long hood.

Nef Anyo's calculating glare betrayed the warm smile on his face as the regiment of Corpus parted, their guns still trained on the woman's back during her approach. The intense glow of her golden eyes pierced through the gloom of her shroud.

"Archimedian Nephanaos."

He had little recollection of this title. But hers was burned into his mind.

"... Dax Marzael?"

He raised his arm, prompting the hundred-strong force to reluctantly lower their weapons and stand down. This was definitely the person he'd been trying to contact, he was sure of it.

"It's been... Four hundred, five hundred years?" He queried as he pushed her hood back, freeing her platinum-silver hair. He remembered her, remembered approximately how long it had been since he last saw her. Remembered the faint scent of iodine. Fuzzy recollections of her smiling and resting her chin on his shoulder as he worked on some sort of technology that he could no longer identify. Her age, her appearance. He remembered having intense feelings for her, which is what led to him transmitting a message. But not much else beyond that.  
"You still don't look a day over three hundred."

"I should think not either, seeing as you didn't have the decency to keep your promise." She spat, ripping his hand away from her shoulder. "Lo and behold, I wake to find that you keep company with these disgraced spinsters who dig at one another like vultures for credits once they've reduced all the rocks around them to borrascas."

Despite being at least a foot taller than her, Nef could still feel her looking down upon him as her tirade continued. His expression quickly soured and his mind raced, trying to diagnose her anger.

"What was the intent of you summoning me here? Did you expect me to be impressed by your garb and your troupe of brainwashed labourers? Melt into your arms as if nothing happened? You promised me that you'd wake me when you got out of that damned cryopod!"  
  
_Cryopod?_

Memories hit him like a hammer. Falling out of a glassy sarcophagus onto rough ice. Crewmen observing him. Clawing at a glacial wall until his fingers bled. Screaming. Crying.  
And then nothing.  
He could vividly remember his time spent working on salvage ships, his promotion to the rank of Sergeant and subsequent rise to aristocracy through various scams, but nothing before that. It only now occurred to him that he couldn't even remember his childhood.  
_Brainwashed._  
  
Marzael had turned around to return to her landing craft when she felt his hand tighten around her forearm.

"Please, let me explain-" Nef hissed, tightening his grip on her. "You honestly think I'd leave you where you lay without good reason!?"  
The Crewmen nearest to the pair subtly hooked their fingers around the trigger mechanisms of their rifles.  
Even they flinched - To a point where they nearly dropped their guns - When they heard the sudden crack of polymer against his face. She'd reeled around and struck him with the back of her hand before his mind could even register her movement.

Nef stared at her from behind latticed fingers as he held the stinging flush of red spreading across his face. She said nothing. She simply glared at him, and it felt as though her gaze was going to chew through him like a mouthful of rusted daggers.

"... Was that my quittance?"

Marzael begrudgingly nodded - The preacher counted himself lucky that she wasn't about to take another swing at him.  
"That was for holding me back, and you'll get another one if you try it again."  
She took a step back to regain her composure, then gestured at the gigantic capital ship looming above Jupiter's gas extractors.  
"Seeing as you clearly didn't call me here to apologize, I suppose you were going to request my protection? It's all I ever seem to do since the fall - Babysit convoys. And I can't imagine these greedy little turncoats are all that intimidating to rampant clones."

He wasn't.

Nef had intended to propose a merger, but given her outburst he'd decided that probably wouldn't end well for him. He'd wait, see if she really was as fond of him as his splintered mind let on. If she had flown here expecting work then perhaps she _should_ be taken on as a part of the security detail. Might be the only way he'd find any sort of company with her. And he was due to offload an obscenely lucrative shipment of hydrogen gas and ammonium chloride - Grineer in the sector would likely zero in on the ship and its cruiser escorts with intent to plunder it for fuel the moment it appeared on their radar.

Profiting from a shit situation yet again. Not that it felt good in this particular instance.

"... Yes, actually." He mumbled, still clutching his face. Good _V_ _oid_ it fucking stung.  
  
"Then I'll prepare to board. I suggest you send this menagerie of painted clowns in suits to do the same."


	2. Elysium

_"Marzael, they'd never allow it. You'd only accomplish meeting the Executors alongside him if you-"_

_Nephanaos peered up from the crowd huddled in the center of the gigantic hall, hoping to catch odd scraps of her conversation over the hushed murmurs of the researchers, mechanics, civilians and wounded personnel surrounding him. There were at least two hundred of them there, hiding quietly from the Infestation, peering from door to door nervously as another set of claws or fangs clashed against the groaning metal._

_"The facility is being overrun with abominations, Imperator Aristeus. Either they go to the pods or we all perish. I should think it would be a greater disgrace to allow that- That THING to assimilate them into its ranks of mindless husks than to break protocol."_

_The Archimedian dipped his head when the imposing commandant of the surviving security force looked the crowd over with a pitiless scowl. His golden robes and flowing syandana glittered like a dying star in the black night sky, but his temperament was as foul as the monsters baying at the doors._

_Marzael stood resolute and unflinching, flanked by two fellow Dax. The trio, badly scarred and armor tarnished, had just about managed to lead the herd of survivors through the infested meatgrinder outside. Until the Imperator had locked them all in the cavernous hall, insisting they go no further._

_"You'd do well to remember your place, soldier. They'll never be permitted to enter cryosleep, you know that all too well. You can't bring him with you. We remain and wait for those we can bring."_

_Nephanaos' heart sank. He knew that they could be stood there for a full cycle arguing their stances and by time a resolution would be made they'd either have died of starvation or the Infested at the gates. They'd all be dead regardless if the Imperator had his way._

_"Myself and the other Dax present are sworn to protect the people of the Empire. Archimedian Nephanaos and his ilk are no exception to the principles we are bound to follow. He is like corpus to me and I am not abandoning him here."_

_The Imperator scoffed and turned his nose up at her._

_"They barely classify as people and that fact still stands whether you personally hold him in high regard or not. They are all imperfect. Imperfection is expendable when it has outlived its usefulness. We'll await the arrival of others, I won't have the few cryopods and emergency craft we have left here wasted on these rejects."_

_He was about to order that the trio stand down when the tendrils of the afflicted violently pried through one of the many doors in the hall. The monstrosities had began to collectively wrench the interlocking slabs apart, inciting panicked screams and a stampede to the opposite end of the atrium which saw some of the less mobile amongst the living trampled._

_"There **aren't** any others! I'll not hesitate to behead you where you stand and cut the damn door open myself if you don't let them go!"_  


* * *

 

The Void preacher woke up in a cold sweat and bolted upright. He awoke not to the sound of bellowing Infested and the glint of their putrefacted flesh, but the cargo loaders of the _785-ELYSIUM_ tirelessly sorting shipping containers on the lower decks and the occasional echoing chirp of encrypted voices through crewman helmets. The twinkle of shuttle vessels flitting by the viewports, ferrying volatile cargo from the gas collection platforms. The persistent stinging sensation lingering in his face.

And Marzael standing to the side of his doorway like a somber gargoyle, hand lolling on the hilt of her ether sword. He gazed at her longingly for a moment, as if the dim light creeping over her from the tinted viewport was the only light left in the entire system. As if her gently glowing, half-lidded eyes held the entirety of the Void within them.

She'd apparently taken to shadowing him around the ship since taking her place amongst his security staff, not that he was about to complain.

The cold air stung his bare, sweat-laced skin when he slid from beneath the silken sheets and he was quick to punch the release on his reinforced locker to rummage around for clothing. He'd barely hear her voice over the bustle of people and machinery working tirelessly in the lower decks.  
His bed was one of the few luxuries he couldn't do without since he'd amassed his wealth. The thought of having to go back to sleeping upright while suspended by mechanical arms - Or worse, in a cramped 'storage unit' reminiscent of a mortuary for the living - made him shudder.

"... Can't sleep?" She enquired.

He was reluctant to tell her about the nightmare - Reluctant to ask if it was a figment of his imagination or something that had actually happened to them. Amnesia didn't seem like a particularly endearing trait, after all.

"Can't you? There's enough room here for you."

She tsked and leaned slighly against the brushed metal wall, averting her eyes until he'd managed to clumsily pull a one-piece suit on.  
"I wouldn't be a particularly effective bodyguard if I slept while a Grineer boarding party tore through the vessel, would I? I've already seen what their pod barrages do to a convoy since I awoke."

As he tinkered with the cuffs of his garment, a sudden realization dawned upon him - She'd flown in on a Liset. Where did she get it? How? Stolen from one of those biomechanical abominations? Did she always have one?

_Was she always in the company of those 'Tenno'?_

Nef looked over his shoulder at her and their eyes met for a brief moment. Anxious thoughts and a sudden clarity of his broken memory pushed any curiosity about her means of transportation out of his mind.  
_Should I say something? Say something-_

"... I didn't want to leave you in that pod."

Silence.

"I couldn't get you out. Your half of the assemblage was frozen solid-"

Marzael tilted her head to face him, maintaining her position against the wall. Nef's body tensed and he struggled to articulate his thoughts.

"- A-And when we returned to the cavern with cutting equipment a year later, the entire thing was just- It was gone-"

She lazily pushed herself away from the wall and started to tread toward him. He froze like a Kubrow caught in the lamps of a Grineer mining drill, as if the irate woman wouldn't be able to see him if he kept still.  
_She's still got her hand on that sword hilt. Fuck-_

"M-Marzael please! I-"  
She turned him around and pressed a finger to his lips. Her biting glare had softened considerably, much to his relief.

"Say no more."  
The Dax paused for a moment, slowly running her finger down his tattooed chin. "... You really don't remember what happened, do you?"

"I vaguely remembered you, but not much else" He mumbled, fidgeting and picking at his sleeve. "I've been trying to find you ever since that cryopod went missing. I spent most of my pay making sure a message would be pinged to passing ships when I was still a crewman. Part of me thought that you were just a figment of my imagination until today, but I kept the transmission running anyway."

He noticed the curious, sympathetic twinkle in her eyes.  
_Just tell her now. Tell her while she's calm. Tell. Her. You. Loved. Her._

"Marzael, I-"

He was rudely interrupted by the scream of the capital ship's engines drowning his voice out and the sudden inversion of gravity as the massive hulk peeled away from Jupiter's atmosphere, which saw her quickly snare his waist with her arms to prevent him from hitting the ceiling.  
He'd neglected his footwear. He wasn't magnetized to the floor by his brick-like shoes.  
And now he had to be anchored by the woman who likely still held some shred of resentment for him after he abandoned her.

The loudspeakers in the immaculate halls screeched to life with the din of a monotone digitized voice detailing the transit route, points where hostile contact was expected and approximate travel time.  
It was nothing but a distant droning noise to him - He was distracted by her hair flowing in the low-gravity, wispy silver strands brushing against his reddening face. He gently snaked his arms under hers, felt the musculature of her lower back shifting as she kept him grounded. He felt as though the Void had willed time to stand still for them, that they were the only living things left on the entire ship.

Until the fortified door to the room hissed open, granting entry to a rather well-decorated Corpus Crewman with an elaborately painted helmet.

"I hope I wasn't interrupting something." The Crewman started, sensor bar of his helmet trained on the pair - who now realized they'd been clinging to one another long after the ship's interior gravity field had kicked in. They awkwardly parted and Nef turned back to the locker as the Corpus droned on. "Estimated travel time is approximately eighteen months. We need to avoid the rails due to the craft in the hold, it's emitting such an obscene level of Void echoes that all of the lead in the galaxy couldn't hide it from Rail Control."

Nef grumbled and pressed his palms to his blackened eyes. The drawl of the Crewman had already started to grate on his nerves.  
  
"I've also prepared the holo-transmission equipment for your scheduled meeting with the Board-"  
  
"Yes, yes, very good. Dismissed." Nef snapped, shooing at the man.  
  
Marzael sighed and slinked back to her dark corner as the Eximus bowed and took his leave.   
Disappointed by the interruption?   
He daresn't ask.

"... Welcome aboard The Elysium, Mar. We'll be here a while, unfortunately."

 _Three-hundred and forty two million miles_ , he thought as he ripped his boots out from the bottom of the locker, _and my crew have already fucked something up for me within the first._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get this posted before IRL consumes me again. It feels more clunky and it's a bit rushed, but eh.


End file.
